Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Liberace: I rest my case

A little pointless fiction to make you wish you hadn't eaten breakfast.

One name. That’s all it takes. If the world only needs one
name to remember you, then you’re a sex symbol forever. Done deal. You could be
ninety-seven years old, and to your core of devoted fans, the sound of that one
word will still be a smack in the groin with a greasy feather duster.

My cousin Trayla had a thing for Napoleon. “That name, it
just slides around your mouth like a popsicle blowjob,” she’d muse dreamily as
I tried not to hear. “Makes me wanna quit taking showers, then find me a jockey
to hump.”

Exactly. Disgusting, but on point. It’s a reflex, like
yawning while your wife is yammering on about her feelings, or farting in
anticipation at the McDonald’s drive-through. And thus it has long been for me
with Madonna, that gap-toothed, furry-pitted goddess whose face I baptized in
effigy a thousand times during my luckless high school years. MTV was my church,
Madonna my sacrament, and I gave nightly praise.

Still, I was the laughingstock of Yahtzee Bootcamp ’09 when
I admitted that my loins still burned for the Material Girl. The reaction to what
I thought was a private conversation, whispered furtively in between drills,
was completely disproportionate. It wasn’t like I stood up and announced, “I
wanna stick my dick in your grandma!” (And maybe I do, but that bit of information
is on a need-to-know basis, and only your grandma needs to know.)

Bixby, with his full-on man boobs and his halfhearted roll,
had the nerve to snicker at me. He snickered so hard he had to blow his nose,
and his Dizzy Gillespie tissue stylings made us the center of attention in the
room. I tried to shut him up as Yahtzee Master Dale made his way toward our
table; he was a no-nonsense motherfucker, and you’d better be talking about
Yahtzee when he came around.

“This doesn’t sound like you’re thinking about the dice and
the numbers,” Dale admonished us. “It sounds like you’re wasting your time and
mine.”

I was ashamed and stared down at my now-still lap. Dale was
about to move on when Bixby had to open his big mouth.

“Kevin wants to bone Madonna!”

Dale’s face was carved out of stone, but pebbles began to
fall, then the pebbles gave way to boulders, and after the avalanche, the
Master was barking laughter and slapping Bixby on the back. Everyone in the
room joined in, jeering at me and rattling their dice. I wanted to crawl up my
own ass and disappear, but it was clamped shut in humiliation, and there was no
tiny crowbar in sight.

I opened my mouth to explain, to defend my position, to tell
them that Madonna wasn’t so bad if you just did her from behind. In the end, I
set my dice down on the table and made my way through the braying crowd with as
much dignity as my club foot and bicycle shorts would allow. Dale bellowed at
me as my hand touched the doorknob.

“Mister, if you walk out, you stay walked out!”

There was no going back, although I did call Bixby and ask
him to bring my lucky pencil to me in the hallway. He was still blowing his
nose.

It gnaws at me, late at night when the sheets are clammy
with regret and I’m rewinding Desperately Seeking Susan. What might have been? Where
would the dice have taken me? Would I be riding the Yahtzee high life if I
hadn’t lost the Master’s respect? I’ve come to hold Madonna herself responsible
for my failure, as if she and her pointy bazooms personally led me to confess
our secret love twenty years too late for it to be anything but gross.

Madonna, you’ve had the world by the balls for decades. Did
you really need to crush my dreams like one more set of grapes in your bony
hand? I would shake my fist at you in quiet rage, but my wrist is kinda shot
right now.